The only events worth noting in his material career are his installation at Toulouse, at the age of thirty (May 14, 1631), as commissioner of requests; his marriage on June 1st of the same year to Louise de Long, his mother’s cousin, who presented him with three sons, one of whom, Clément-Samuel, became his father’s scientific executor, and two daughters, both of whom took the veil; his promotion in 1648 to a King’s councillorship in the local parliament of Toulouse, a position which he filled with dignity, integrity, and great ability for seventeen years—his entire working life of thirty four years was spent in the exacting service of the state; and finally, his death at Castres on January 12, 1665, in his sixty fifth year, two days after he had finished conducting a case in the town of his death. “Story?” he might have said; “Bless you, sir! I have none.” And yet this tranquilly living, honest, even-tempered, scrupulously just man has one of the finest stories in the history of mathematics.